Dark energy and dark matter as curvature eects

SAIt 2012 c Memorie della

Dark energy and dark matter as curvature eects

S. Capozziello

Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Universit`a di Napoli ”Federico II” and INFN Sez. di Napoli, Compl. Univ. Monte S. Angelo, Ed.N, Via Cinthia, I-80126 Napoli, Italy

e-mail: capozzie@na.infn.it

Abstract. The so called f (R)-gravity could be, in principle, able to explain the acceler- ated expansion of the Universe without adding unknown forms of dark energy/dark matter but, more simply, extending the General Relativity by generic functions of the Ricci scalar.

However, a part several phenomenological models, there is no final f (R)-theory capable of fitting all the observations and addressing all the issues related to the presence of dark en- ergy and dark matter. Astrophysical observations are pointing out huge amounts of ”dark matter” and ”dark energy” needed to explain the observed large scale structures and cosmic accelerating expansion. Up to now, no experimental evidence has been found, at funda- mental level, to explain such mysterious components. The problem could be completely reversed considering dark matter and dark energy as ”shortcomings” of General Relativity.

1. Introduction

Although being the best fit to a wide range of data, the ΛCDM model is affected by strong theoretical shortcomings that have motivated the search for alternative models Copeland E.J., (2006). Dark Energy (DE) models mainly rely on the implicit assumption that Einstein’s General Relativity (GR) is the correct theory of gravity. Nevertheless, its validity on the larger astrophysical and cosmological scales has never been tested, and it is therefore con- ceivable that both cosmic speed up and Dark Matter (DM) represent signals of a break- down of GR. Following this line of thinking, the choice of a generic function f (R) as the gravitational Lagrangian, where R is the Ricci scalar, can be derived by matching the data and by the ”economic” requirement that no exotic ingredients have to be added. This is the un-

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derlying philosophy of what are referred to as

f (R) gravity Capozziello S., (2008). It is worth

noticing that Solar System experiments show

the validity of GR at these scales so that f (R)

theories should not differ too much from GR at

this level Olmo G.J., (2005). In other words,

the PPN limit of such models must not vio-

late the experimental constraints on Eddington

parameters. A positive answer to this request

has been recently achieved for several f (R)

theories Capozziello S., (2005), nevertheless

it has to be remarked that this debate is far

to be definitively concluded. Although higher

order gravity theories have received much at-

tention in cosmology, since they are naturally

able to give rise to the accelerating expan-

sion (both in the late and in the early universe

Capozziello S., 2003), it is possible to demon-

strate that f (R) theories can also play a ma-

jor role at astrophysical scales Capozziello S.,

(2007, 2009). In fact, modifying the gravity ac-

tion can affect the gravitational potential in the low energy limit.

Provided that the modified potential re- duces to the Newtonian one on the Solar System scale, this implication could represent an intriguing opportunity rather than a short- coming for f (R) theories. In fact, a corrected gravitational potential could offer the possibil- ity to fit galaxy rotation curves without the need of Dark Matter. In addition, one could work out a formal analogy between the correc- tions to the Newtonian potential and the usu- ally adopted Dark Matter models. In order to investigate the consequences of f (R) theories on both cosmological and astrophysical scales, let us first remind the basics of this approach and then discuss dark energy and dark matter issues as curvature effects.

2. Dark energy as a curvature effect From a mathematical viewpoint, f (R) theories generalize the Hilbert - Einstein Lagrangian as L = √

−g f (R) without assuming a priori the functional form of Lagrangian density in the Ricci scalar. The field equations are obtained by varying with respect to the metric compo- nents to get Magnano G., (1987) :

f ⁰ (R)R αβ − 1

2 f (R)g αβ (1)

= f ⁰ (R) ^;µν 

g αµ g βν − g αβ g µν

 + T _αβ ^M

where the prime denotes derivative with re- spect to the argument and T _αβ ^M is the standard matter stress - energy tensor. Defining the cur- vature stress - energy tensor as

T _αβ ^curv = 1 f ⁰ (R)

( 1 6 g αβ 

f (R) − R f ⁰ (R)  (2) + f ⁰ (R) ^;µν (g αµ g βν − g αβ g µν ) o

.

Eqs.(1) may be recast in the Einstein - like form as :

G αβ = R αβ − 1

2 g αβ R = T _αβ ^curv + T _αβ ^M / f ⁰ (R) (3) where matter non - minimally couples to ge- ometry through the term 1/ f ⁰ (R). The pres- ence of term f ⁰ (R) ;µν renders the equations of

fourth order, while, for f (R) = R, the curvature stress - energy tensor T _αβ ^curv identically vanishes and Eqs.(3) reduce to the standard second - order Einstein field equations. As it is clear, from Eq.(3), the curvature stress - energy ten- sor formally plays the role of a further source term in the field equations so that its effect is the same as that of an effective fluid of purely geometrical origin.

However the metric variation is just one of the approaches towards f (R) gravity: in fact, one can face the problem also consider- ing the so called Palatini approach (e.g. see Ferraris M., 1994; Sotiriou T.P., 2007) where the metric and connection fields are consid- ered independent. Apart from some differences in the interpretation, one can deal with a fluid of geometric origin in this case as well. The scheme outlined above provides all the ingre- dients we need to tackle with the dark side of the Universe. Depending on the scales, such a curvature fluid can play the role of DM and DE. From the cosmological point of view, in the standard framework of a spatially flat ho- mogenous and isotropic Universe, the cosmo- logical dynamics is determined by its energy budget through the Friedmann equations. The cosmic acceleration is achieved when the r.h.s.

of the acceleration equation remains positive (in physical units with 8πG = c = 1) :

¨a a = − 1

6 (ρ _tot + 3p tot ) , (4) where a is the scale factor, H = ˙a/a the Hubble parameter, the dot denotes derivative with re- spect to cosmic time, and the subscript tot de- notes the sum of the curvature fluid and the matter contribution to the energy density and pressure. From the above relation, the acceler- ation condition, for a dust dominated model, leads to :

ρ curv + ρ M + 3p curv < 0 → w curv < − ρ tot

3ρ curv (5) so that a key role is played by the effective quantities :

ρ curv = 8 f ⁰ (R)

( 1 2

 f (R) − R f ⁰ (R) 

− 3H ˙ R f ⁰⁰ (R) )

, (6)

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 z

0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5 1.75

y

Fig. 1. The Hubble diagram of 20 radio galaxies to- gether with the “gold” sample of SNeIa, in term of the redshift as suggested in Daly R.A., (2004). The best fit curve refers to the f (R) - gravity model with- out Dark Matter.

and

w curv = −1 +

R f ¨ ⁰⁰ (R) + ˙ R h

R f ˙ ⁰⁰⁰ (R) − H f ⁰⁰ (R) i

 f (R) − R f ⁰ (R) 

/2 − 3H ˙ R f ⁰⁰ (R) . (7) As a first simple choice, one may neglect ordi- nary matter and assume a power - law form f (R) = f 0 R ⁿ , with n a real number, which represents a straightforward generalization of the Einstein GR in the limit n = 1. One can find power - law solu- tions for a(t) providing a satisfactory fit to the SNeIa data and a good agreement with the estimated age of the Universe in the range 1.366 < n < 1.376 Capozziello S., (2003). The data fit turns out to be significant (see Fig. 1) improving the χ ² value and, it fixes the best fit value at n = 3.46 when it is accounted only the baryon contribute Ω b ≈ 0.04 (according with BBN prescriptions). It has to be re- marked that considering DM does not modify the re- sult of the fit, supporting the assumption of no need for DM in this model. From the evolution of the Hubble parameter in term of redshift one can even calculate the Age of Universe. The best fit value n = 3.46 provides t univ ≈ 12.41 Gyr. It is worth noting that considering f (R) = f 0 R ⁿ gravity rep- resents only the simplest generalization of Einstein theory. In other words, it has to be considered that R ⁿ - gravity represents just a working hypothesis as there is no overconfidence that such a model is the correct final gravity theory. In a sense, we want only to suggest that several cosmological and astrophys- ical results can be well interpreted in the realm of a power law extended gravity model. This approach gives no rigidity about the value of the power n, al- though it would be preferable to determine a model capable of working at different scales. Furthermore,

we do not expect to be able to reproduce the whole cosmological phenomenology by means of a simple power law model, which has been demonstrated to be not sufficiently versatile.

For example, we can demonstrate that this model fails when it is analyzed with respect to its capability of providing the correct evolutionary con- ditions for the perturbation spectra of matter over- density Zhang P., (2006). This point is typically ad- dressed as one of the most important issues which suggest the need for Dark Matter. In fact, if one wants to discard this component, it is crucial to match the observational results related to the Large Scale Structure of the Universe and the Cosmic Microwave Background which show, respectively at late time and at early time, the signature of the ini- tial matter spectrum. As important remark, we note that the quantum spectrum of primordial perturba- tions, which provides the seeds of matter perturba- tions, can be positively recovered in the framework of R ⁿ - gravity. In fact, f (R) ∝ R ² can represent a viable model with respect to CMBR data and it is a good candidate for cosmological Inflation. To de- velop the matter power spectrum suggested by this model, we resort to the equation for the matter con- trast obtained in Zhang P., (2006) in the case of fourth order gravity. This equation can be deduced considering the conformal Newtonian gauge for the perturbed metric Zhang P., (2006) :

ds ² = (1 + 2ψ)dt ² − a ² (1 + 2φ)Σ ³ _{i =1} (dx ⁱ ). (8) In GR, it is φ = −ψ, since there is no anisotropic stress; in extended gravity, this relation breaks, in general, and the i , j components of field equa- tions give new relations between φ and ψ. In par- ticular, for f (R) gravity, due to nonvanishing f R;i; j

(with i , j), the φ − ψ relation becomes scale de- pendent. Instead of the perturbation equation for the matter contrast δ, we provide here its evolution in term of the growth index f = d ln δ/d ln a, that is the directly measured quantity at z ∼ 0.15 :

f ⁰ (a) − f (a) ²

a +

"

2 a + 1

a E ⁰ (a)

#

f (a) (9)

− 1 − 2Q

2 − 3Q · 3Ω m a ⁻⁴ n E(a) ² R ˜ ⁿ⁻¹ = 0 ,

E(a) = H(a)/H 0 , ˜ R is the dimensionless Ricci scalar, and

Q = − 2 f RR c ² k ²

f R a ² . (10)

For n = 1 the previous expression gives the or-

dinary growth index relation for the Cosmological

0.1 0.150.2 0.3 0.5 0.7 1 a

0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

f

0.1 0.150.2 0.3 0.5 0.7 1 a

0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

f

Fig. 2. Scale factor evolution of the growth index f : (left) modified gravity, in the case Ω m = Ω bar ∼ 0.04, for the SNeIa best fit model with n = 3.46, (right) the same evolution in the case of a ΛCDM model. In the case of R ⁿ - gravity it is shown also the dependence on the scale k. The three cases k = 0.01, 0.001, 0.0002 have been checked. Only the latter case shows a very small deviation from the leading behavior.

Standard Model. It is clear, from Eq.(9), that such a model suggests a scale dependence of the growth index which is contained into the corrective term Q so that, when Q → 0, this dependence can be reasonably neglected. In the most general case, one can resort to the limit aH < k < 10 ⁻³ h M pc ⁻¹ , where Eq.(9) is a good approximation, and non- linear effects on the matter power spectrum can be neglected.

Studying numerically Eq.(9), one obtains the growth index evolution in term of the scale factor; for the sake of simplicity, we assume the initial condition f (a ls ) = 1 at the last scattering surface as in the case of matter-like domination. The results are sum- marized in Fig.(2), where we show, in parallel, the growth index evolution in R ⁿ - gravity and in the ΛCDM model.

In the case of Ω m = Ω bar ∼ 0.04, one can ob- serve a strong disagreement between the expected rate of the growth index and the behavior induced by power law fourth order gravity models. These re- sults seem to suggest that an extended gravity model which considers a simple power law of Ricci scalar, although cosmologically relevant at late times, is not viable to describe the evolution of Universe at all scales. In other words, such a scheme seems too sim- ple to give account for the whole cosmological phe- nomenology. In fact, in Zhang P., (2006) a gravity Lagrangian considering an exponential correction to the Ricci scalar f (R) = R + A exp(−B R) (with A, B two constants), gives more interesting results and displays a grow factor rate which is in agreement with the observational results at least in the Dark Matter case. To corroborate this point of view, one has to consider that when the choice of f (R) is per- formed starting from observational data (pursuing

an inverse approach) as in Capozziello S., (2005), the reconstructed Lagrangian is a non - trivial poly- nomial in term of the Ricci scalar. A result which directly suggests that the whole cosmological phe- nomenology can be accounted only with a suitable non - trivial function of the Ricci scalar rather than a simple power law function. As matter of fact, the re- sults obtained with respect to the study of the matter power spectra in the case of R ⁿ - gravity do not inval- idate the whole approach, since they can be referred to the too simple form of the model.

3. Dark matter as a curvature effect The results obtained at cosmological scales moti- vates further analysis of f (R) theories. In a sense, one is wondering whether the curvature fluid, which works as DE, can also play the role of effective DM thus yielding the possibility of recovering the observed astrophysical phenomenology by the only visible matter. It is well known that, in the low en- ergy limit, higher order gravity implies a modified gravitational potential. Therefore, in our discussion, a fundamental role is played by the new gravita- tional potential descending from the given fourth order gravity theories we are referring to. By con- sidering the case of a pointlike mass m and solv- ing the vacuum field equations for a Schwarzschild - like metric, one gets from a theory f (R) = f 0 R ⁿ , the modified gravitational potential Capozziello S., (2007) :

Φ(r) = − Gm 2r

 

1 + r r c

! _β 

  (11)

where

β = 12n ² − 7n − 1

6n ² − 4n + 2 − (12)

−

√ 36n ⁴ + 12n ³ − 83n ² + 50n + 1 6n ² − 4n + 2

which corrects the ordinary Newtonian potential by a power - law term. In particular, this correction sets in on scales larger than r c which value depends es- sentially on the mass of the system. The corrected potential (11) reduces to the standard Φ ∝ 1/r for n = 1 as it can be seen from the relation (12).

The result (11) deserves some comments. As discussed in detail in Capozziello S., (2007), we have assumed the spherically symmetric metric and imposed it into the field equations (1) considered in the weak field limit approximation. As a result, we obtain a corrected Newtonian potential which accounts for the strong non-linearity of gravity re- lated to the higher-order theory. However, we have to notice that Birkhoff’s theorem does not hold, in general, for f (R) gravity but other spherically symmetric solutions than the Schwarzschild one can be found in these extended theories of grav- ity Capozziello S., (2007). The generalization of Eq.(11) to extended systems is achieved by divid- ing the system in infinitesimal mass elements and summing up the potentials generated by each sin- gle element. In the continuum limit, we replace the sum with an integral over the mass density of sys- tem taking care of eventual symmetries of the mass distribution (see Capozziello S., (2007) for details).

Once the gravitational potential has been computed, one may evaluate the rotation curve v ² _c (r) and com- pare it with the data. For extended systems, one has typically to resort to numerical techniques, but the main effect may be illustrated by the rotation curve for the pointlike case, that is:

v ² _c (r) = Gm 2r

 

1 + (1 − β) r r c

! _β 

  . (13)

Compared with the Newtonian result v ² _c = Gm/r, the corrected rotation curve is modified by the ad- dition of the second term in the r.h.s. of Eq.(13).

For 0 < β < 1, the corrected rotation curve is higher than the Newtonian one. Since measurements of spiral galaxies rotation curves signals a circular velocity higher than those which are predicted on the basis of the observed luminous mass and the Newtonian potential, the above result suggests the possibility that our modified gravitational potential may fill the gap between theory and observations without the need of additional DM.

It is worth noting that the corrected rota- tion curve is asymptotically vanishing as in the Newtonian case, while it is usually claimed that ob- served rotation curves are flat (i.e., asymptotically constant). Actually, observations do not probe v c up to infinity, but only show that the rotation curve is flat within the measurement uncertainties up to the last measured point. This fact by no way excludes the possibility that v c goes to zero at infinity. In or- der to observationally check the above result, we have considered a sample of LSB galaxies with well measured HI + Hα rotation curves extending far be- yond the visible edge of the system. LSB galax- ies are known to be ideal candidates to test Dark Matter models since, because of their high gas con- tent, the rotation curves can be well measured and corrected for possible systematic errors by compar- ing 21 - cm HI line emission with optical Hα and [NII] data. Moreover, they are supposed to be Dark Matter dominated so that fitting their rotation curves without this elusive component is a strong evidence in favor of any successful alternative theory of grav- ity.

Our sample contains 15 LSB galaxies with data on both the rotation curve, the surface mass den- sity of the gas component and R - band disk pho- tometry extracted from a larger sample selected by de Blok & Bosma de Blok W.J.G., (2002). We as- sume the stars are distributed in an infinitely thin and circularly symmetric disk with surface density Σ(r) = Υ ? I 0 exp(−r/r d ) where the central surface lu- minosity I 0 and the disk scalelength r d are obtained from fitting to the stellar photometry. The gas sur- face density has been obtained by interpolating the data over the range probed by HI measurements and extrapolated outside this range. When fitting to the theoretical rotation curve, there are three quantities to be determined, namely the stellar mass - to - light (M/L) ratio, Υ ? and the theory parameters (β, r c ). It is worth stressing that, while fit results for different galaxies should give the same β, r c is related to one of the integration constants of the field equations.

As such, it is not a universal quantity and its value must be set on a galaxy - by - galaxy basis. However, it is expected that galaxies having similar properties in terms of mass distribution have similar values of r c so that the scatter in r c must reflect somewhat the scatter in the circular velocities. In order to match the model with the data, we perform a likelihood analysis determining for each galaxy, using, as fit- ting parameters β, log r c (with r c in kpc) and the gas mass fraction ¹ f g . As it is evident considering the

1 This is related to the M/L ratio as Υ ? = [(1 −

f g )M g ]/( f g L d ) with M g = 1.4M HI the gas (HI + He)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 RHkpcL

10 20 30 40 50 60 70

vcHkmsL

NGC 4455

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

RHkpcL 0

20 40 60 80 100

vcHkmsL

NGC 5023

Fig. 3. Best fit theoretical rotation curve superim- posed to the data for the LSB galaxy NGC 4455 (left) and NGC 5023 (right). To better show the ef- fect of the correction to the Newtonian gravitational potential, we report the total rotation curve v _c (r) (solid line), the Newtonian one (short dashed) and the corrected term (long dashed).

results from the different fits, the experimental data are successfully fitted by the model (see Capozziello S., (2007) for details). In particular, for the best fit range of β (β = 0.80 ± 0.08), one can conclude that R ⁿ gravity with 2.3 < n < 5.3 (best fit value n = 3.2 which well overlaps the above mentioned range of n fitting SNeIa Hubble diagram) can be a good can- didate to solve the missing matter problem in LSB galaxies without any Dark Matter.

At this point, it is worth wondering whether a link may be found between R ⁿ gravity and the stan- dard approach based on Dark Matter haloes since both theories fit equally well the same data. As a matter of fact, it is possible to define an effective Dark Matter halo by imposing that its rotation curve equals the correction term to the Newtonian curve induced by R ⁿ gravity. Mathematically, one can split the total rotation curve derived from R ⁿ gravity as v ² _c (r) = v ² _c,N (r) + v ² _c,corr (r) where the second term is the correction. Considering, for simplicity a spher- mass, M _d = Υ _? L _d and L _d = 2πI ₀ r ² _d the disk total mass and luminosity.

ical halo embedding a thin exponential disk, we may also write the total rotation curve as v ² _c (r) = v ² _c,disk (r) + v ² _c,DM (r) with v ² _c,disk (r) the Newtonian disk rotation curve and v ² _c,DM (r) = GM DM (r)/r the Dark Matter one, M _DM (r) being its mass distribution.

Equating the two expressions, we get : M _DM (η) = M _vir η

η _vir

!

(14) 2 ^β−5 η ^−β _c (1 − β)η

I ₀ (η) − V _d (η)

2 ^β−5 η ^−β _c (1 − β)η

I ₀ (η _vir ) − V _d (η _vir ) .

with η = r/r _d , Σ ₀ = Υ _? i ₀ , V _d (η) = I ₀ (η/2)K ₀ (η/2) × I ₁ (η/2)K ₁ (η/2) ² and :

I 0 (η, β) = Z _∞

0

F 0 (η, η ⁰ , β)k ^3−β η ⁰

e ^−η

dη ⁰ (15) with F ₀ only depending on the geometry of the sys- tem and “vir” indicating virial quantities. Eq.(14) defines the mass profile of an effective spherically symmetric Dark Matter halo whose ordinary rota- tion curve provides the part of the corrected disk rotation curve due to the addition of the curvature corrective term to the gravitational potential. It is ev- ident that, from an observational viewpoint, there is no way to discriminate between this dark halo model and R ⁿ gravity.

Having assumed spherical symmetry for the mass distribution, it is immediate to compute the mass density for the effective dark halo as ρ _DM (r) = (1/4πr ² )dM _DM /dr. The most interesting features of the density profile are its asymptotic behaviors that may be quantified by the logarithmic slope α _DM = d ln ρ _DM /d ln r which can be computed only numer- ically as function of η for fixed values of β (or n).

As expected, α _DM depends explicitly on β, while (r _c , Σ ₀ , r _d ) enter indirectly through η _vir . The asymp- totic values at the center and at infinity denoted as α ₀ and α _∞ result particularly interesting. It turns out that α ₀ almost vanishes so that in the inner- most regions the density is approximately constant.

Indeed, α ₀ = 0 is the value corresponding to models having an inner core such as the cored isothermal sphere and the Burkert model Burkert A., (1995).

Moreover, it is well known that galactic rotation curves are typically best fitted by cored dark halo models. On the other hand, the outer asymptotic slope is between −3 and −2, that are values typical of most dark halo models in literature. In particular, for β = 0.80 one finds (α ₀ , α _∞ ) = (−0.002, −2.41),

2 Here I _l and K _l , with l = 1, 2 are the Bessel

functions of first and second type.

which are quite similar to the value for the Burkert model (0, −3). It is worth noting that the Burkert model has been empirically proposed to provide a good fit to the LSB and dwarf galaxies rotation curves. The values of (α 0 , α ∞ ) we find for the best fit effective dark halo therefore suggest a possible the- oretical motivation for the Burkert-like models. Due to the construction, the properties of the effective Dark Matter halo are closely related to the disk one.

As such, we do expect some correlation between the dark halo and the disk parameters. To this aim, ex- ploiting the relation between the virial mass and the disk parameters , one can obtain a relation for the Newtonian virial velocity V vir = GM vir /r vir :

M d ∝ (3/4πδ th Ω m ρ crit )

r _d

η ^β c

2 ^β−6 (1 − β)G

V _vir

I 0 (V vir , β) . (16) We have numerically checked that Eq.(16) may be well approximated as M d ∝ V _vir ^a which has the same formal structure as the baryonic Tully - Fisher (BTF) relation M b ∝ V ^a _{f lat} with M b the total (gas + stars) baryonic mass and V f lat the circular velocity on the flat part of the observed rotation curve. In order to test whether the BTF can be explained thanks to the effective Dark Matter halo we are proposing, we should look for a relation between V vir and V f lat . This is not analytically possible since the estimate of V f lat depends on the peculiarities of the observed rotation curve such as how far it extends and the un- certainties on the outermost points. For given values of the disk parameters, we therefore simulate the- oretical rotation curves for some values of r c and measure V f lat finally choosing the fiducial value for r c that gives a value of V f lat as similar as possible to the measured one. Inserting the relation thus found between V f lat and V vir into Eq.(16) and averaging over different simulations, we finally get :

log M b = (2.88 ± 0.04) log V f lat + (4.14 ± 0.09)(17) while a direct fit to the observed data gives McGaugh S.S., (2005) :

log M b = (2.98 ± 0.29) log V f lat + (3.37 ± 0.13) .(18) The slope of the predicted and observed BTF are in good agreement thus leading further support to our approach. The zeropoint is markedly different with the predicted one being significantly larger than the observed one. However, it is worth stressing that both relations fit the data with similar scatter. A discrepancy in the zeropoint can be due to our ap- proximate treatment of the effective halo which does not take into account the gas component. Neglecting

this term, we should increase the effective halo mass and hence V vir which affects the relation with V f lat

leading to a higher than observed zeropoint. Indeed, the larger is M g /M d , the more the points deviate from our predicted BTF thus confirming our hy- pothesis. Given this caveat, we can conclude, with confidence, that R ⁿ gravity offers a theoretical foun- dation even for the empirically found BTF relation.

Although the results outlined along this paper are referred to a simple choice of fourth order gravity models ( f (R) = f 0 R ⁿ ) they could represent an in- teresting paradigm. In fact, even if such a model is not suitable to provide the correct form of the matter power spectra, and this suggests that a more compli- cated Lagrangian is needed to reproduce the whole dark sector phenomenology at all scales, we have shown that considering extensions of GR can al- low to explain some important issues of cosmologi- cal and astrophysical phenomenology. We have seen that extended gravity models can reproduce SNeIa Hubble diagram without Dark Matter, giving sig- nificant predictions even with regard to the age of Universe. In addition, the modification of the grav- itational potential which arises as a natural effect in the framework of higher order gravity can rep- resent a fundamental tool to interpret the flatness of rotation curves of LSB galaxies. Furthermore, if one considers the model parameters settled by the fit over the observational data on LSB rotation curves, it is possible to construct a phenomenological anal- ogous of Dark Matter halo whose shape is similar to the one of the Burkert model. Since the Burkert model has been empirically introduced to give ac- count of the Dark Matter distribution in the case of LSB and dwarf galaxies, this result could represent an interesting achievement since it gives a theoret- ical foundation to such a model. By investigating the relation among dark halo and the disk param- eters, we have deduced a relation between M d and V f lat which reproduces the baryonic Tully - Fisher.

In fact, exploiting the relation between the virial mass and the disk parameters, one can obtain a re- lation for the virial velocity which can be satisfac- tory approximated as M d ∝ V _vir ^a . Even such a result seems very intriguing since it gives again a theoret- ical interpretation for a phenomenological relation.

As a matter of fact, although not definitive, these re-

sults on f (R) can represent a viable approach for

future investigations and in particular support the

quest for a unified view of the Dark Side of the

Universe that could be interpreted as gravitational

effects indeed.

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